War without strategy. Drones without limits. Data without wisdom. How the Iran conflict is stumbling toward World War III — and no one can explain why.

My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, RAND senior defense analyst David Shlapak, has for decades made a living by imagining how wars spiral out of control — war-gaming the scenarios where miscalculation becomes catastrophe, where deterrence fails, where World War III stops being theoretical.

Today, those scenarios are no longer simulations. They’re unfolding in real time over Iranian airspace, and the people running them may not have thought through what happens next.

Miriam Pawel, author of the definitive Cesar Chavez biography, "The Crusades of Cesar Chavez," joins me on this recent California Sun Podcast to reflect on the shattering of the Cesar Chavez myth — and the harder questions beneath it: what was known, what was ignored, and why movements so often need saints. In this wide-ranging conversation, Pawel explores Chavez’s charisma, control, contradictions, and the challenge of holding both his historic achievements and the harm he may have caused in the same frame.

On this recent TalkCocktial podcast I’m joined by Oxford political scientist Pepper Culpepper, who has spent a decade studying when corporate scandals force actual change—Dieselgate, Cambridge Analytica, Goldman Sachs—and when they just fade away. His book Billionaire Backlash argues scandals briefly overwhelm corporate lobbying when they tap simmering public resentment. He pushes back hard on whether billionaire wealth reflects value creation for society or corruption, and whether making policy through outrage is democracy working or failing.